If you have any friends or acquaintances you would like to educate about the importance of labor unions in creating a decent society, refer them to Robert Kuttner’s excellent article, “A More Perfect Union” at The American Prospect. Subtitled “New York’s Local 6 shows how organized labor can survive and thrive in the service economy,’ Kuttner’s piece spotlights an important local union of New York City’s hotel and restaurant workers and shows how it serves both members and political progress. Some excerpts:

…The Local 6 story suggests that in the enduring struggle of ordinary workers for fair treatment and a fair share of the national product, unions are not only more necessary than ever but still possible…At Local 6, three generations of union leaders have continued to build on the power bequeathed to them by their predecessors, not for their own personal gain but for their membership. Union leaders do not double dip by collecting extra pay as pension- or health-fund trustees; union officers and delegates are democratically elected, and the delegates work as volunteers for no fees. Local 6 also has been corruption-free…The union keeps finding new ways to mobilize the membership, and success builds on success. The union’s members have friends and relatives working in nonunion establishments and know the value of what they’ve got.

It’s a stark contrast from the workplace environment of nonunion shops in the industry.

Absent a union, the boss can fire for any reason or no reason at all. Management can be as arbitrary as it likes in assigning shifts, defining jobs, deciding whom to lay off and whom to call back. No formal process is required, and no explanation need be given. In a city with a large immigrant population at a time of high unemployment, there is a seemingly endless supply of workers willing to do casual jobs at low wages and fearful of being fired. All of which raises the $25-an-hour question. At a time when the strength of unions is dwindling, how does Local 6 do it?

Kuttner sketches the grievance process.

…Effective unions have long used shop stewards–regular workers who are available to listen to grievances and press complaints with managers. Local 6 takes the concept to a new level of sophistication and engagement. In New York’s union hotels, shop stewards are called delegates. They and assistant delegates are elected directly by the membership at each hotel. Every job category has one or several delegates depending on the hotel’s size.
…If a delegate cannot settle a dispute, it goes to the union business agent, a paid staffer who is responsible for several hotels. If there are still differences, the contract provides for binding arbitration. The union also has a tradition that it reserves for special occasions when it needs to make a point–the lobby meeting.
…Because of the union’s institutional power, however, the choreography of resolving disputes is mostly ritualized and peaceful. The contract spells out rights and responsibilities in detail, and the ultimate recourse to binding arbitration gives management an incentive to settle minor issues before they become major ones….The heavily immigrant union–67 languages are spoken among the membership–runs continuing–education programs that range from English as a second language to culinary school.

Unions deliver in terms of politics, notes Kuttner, locally, as well as nationally:

…One of the union’s newer innovations is the Hotel Employees Action Teams, or HEAT. Through HEAT, the union’s members become more involved in local politics, working to elect supportive public officials. At a time when political campaigning is often reduced to writing checks, HEAT is one of the remaining sources of on-the-ground campaigners knocking on their neighbors’ doors. “They punch above their weight,” says Dan Cantor, executive director of New York’s Working Families Party. “Every mayoral candidate is seeking their support.”
…The union’s political alliances pay dividends. A union with well placed friends sends a signal to developers that it’s better to work with the union than against it. A developer seeking to open a new hotel may not want to bargain with the union, but the project must run a gauntlet of zoning approvals, permits, community-planning meetings–all of which can make the developer’s life easy or miserable. The REIT that holds the real estate may be partly owned by another union’s pension fund, which can also encourage the owner to agree to card check.

Kuttner’s piece clarifies, without saying it, why the public workers of Wisconsin and Ohio have fought so hard to protect their collective bargaining rights. As Kuttner explains, “In the end, this story is all about power, and power used responsibly.”

The following article by Democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo

Last week, after yet another episode of bizarre behavior on the Republican campaign trial, one of my partners — political consultant John Hennelly — came into my office and asked, “Next, will all eight of these guys ride into the arena piled into a VW Beetle and pile out with big red noses?”
Over the many decades I have observed or participated in presidential primary contests, I don’t think we have ever been treated to such a clown show.
Recall that the show began with a boomlet for Donald Trump who pretended to run for president to promote his TV show. On December 27th the pre-Iowa debate circus will reach its apogee when Trump chairs the last Republican debate of the year.
And the show would not have been the same without former Godfather Pizza czar Herman Cain. Though Cain has now “suspended” his campaign, who can forget the painful video of his attempts to remember which war was the one in Libya, or his absurd “999” tax plan, or the graphic descriptions from the charges of sexual harassment against him? And who didn’t wonder at his seeming surprise when a recent thirteen-year-long affair somehow managed to find its way into the news when he decided to subject himself to the intense scrutiny of a candidate for President of the United States?
The New York Times reported that the announcement that his campaign had been “suspended” had a “circus-like” atmosphere — “complete with numerous postponements, barbecue, a blues band and supporters in colonial-era dress.”
Of course, when the race began most observers thought that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann might take the prize for least-ready-to-lead the free world. After all, she was prone to off-the-wall statements, offered radical right-wing solutions, and she and her husband owned a business that specialized in “fixing” gay people. But the Tea Party faithful’s short infatuation with Bachmann came to a screeching halt the moment Rick Perry entered the race.
Perry launched his campaign at a “prayer rally,” but it turned out he was better at being the “yell leader” at Texas A&M as an undergraduate than in explaining his positions in debates. His minutes-long attempt to remember the third Federal agency he would eliminate if elected president made everybody watching feel almost as uncomfortable as he appears to be exploring virtually any subject with more depth than a sound-bite. And his seemingly inebriated, giggling New Hampshire speech that ended in a near-swooning hug of a bottle of maple syrup was just downright weird.
Last week we were all reminded once again why Rick Perry has some distance to go convincing voters he is, shall we say, “in command of the facts” — when he indicated that he thought that the voting age in the United States was 21 and he didn’t know the date of the General Election to which he is supposedly devoting his life.
It’s no wonder that on Sunday, Congressman Barney Frank said that in his casting of the Republican campaign as the “Wizard of Oz,” Rick Perry would be the Scarecrow — the one who desperately wanted a brain.
That’s not Ron Paul’s problem. Paul has to be regarded as a serious, knowledgeable legislator. His major limitation is that his well-articulated views are somewhere on the other side of the former planet Pluto when it comes to the American mainstream. Paul not only wants to abolish Medicare, like most of the rest of the Republican field. He also thinks both Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional. He twice introduced legislation to abolish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that protects workers on the job. He opposes the minimum wage, the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve.
To his credit, Paul doesn’t try to sugarcoat or nuance these proposals. He overtly and articulately champions pure social Darwinism. Problem is that most Americans — including most Republicans — don’t. It sounds fine to many Republican primary voters for a candidate to talk about unfettered individual freedom — but when that translates into eliminating their Social Security check it’s a different matter.
Then there is Rick Santorum, defeated Pennsylvania senator, whose answer to just about any world problem is to ban abortion. So far, at least, Rick hasn’t had a turn at the front of the GOP pack — but it’s never too late.
And poor Jon Huntsman — the Rodney Dangerfield of the show, who just can’t get no respect. Seemingly the most qualified, eloquent, knowledgeable and presentable candidate, Huntsman forgot one thing: there is no way for a moderate to be elected dog catcher by a Republican primary electorate that has cascaded to the right — far, far from the American mainstream.
Huntsman is simply the skunk at the Tea Party.
That leaves us with the two apparent “contenders.” Newt Gingrich — the former House Speaker with a seemingly endless supply of far out “big ideas” — and robot-Romney — whose campaign was, up until recently, based mainly on the “inevitability” of his nomination.
From the beginning of the Republican nominating show the story line has been dominated by one central fact — notwithstanding his reputed “inevitability” — three-fourths of the Republican primary electorate simply doesn’t like Mitt Romney. They don’t like him — and perhaps more important — they don’t trust him.
Romney suffers from two overriding problems.
First, he has no core values beyond his own personal ambition. And that is the dictionary definition of what most Americans think of as a “typical politician.”
If he were performing in a side-show at a carnival, the barker might yell out:
“Step right up, see the amazing Mitt Romney — he looks like one man, but he’s really two candidates in one! Vote for Mitt and you get a pro-choice president and an anti-abortion president. You get a pro-health care reform president and an anti-health care reform president. You get a man who four years ago said he would ‘fight for every job in the auto industry,’ and two years later said that Detroit should be allowed to go bankrupt. Watch Mitt Romney perform amazing acts of political contortion to please any audience! Watch the man change colors to blend into his political environment the way a lizard changes color to make himself look like a leaf!”
Turns out that voters don’t think they get added value from a candidate that is actually “two candidates in one.” Republican voters, Independent voters, Democratic voters — all have one thing in common. They all want candidates with core values. That is an independent variable in politics. And that is what Mitt Romney isn’t.
John Kerry has a decades-long history of demonstrating his core values, yet in 2004, Karl Rove managed to convince many swing voters that he did not. Think how much easier it will be for Democrats — and for that matter his Republican primary rivals — to convince voters that a guy like Mitt Romney has no core.
That’s why in his version of the “Wizard of Oz,” Barney Frank casts Romney as the Tin Man — the one without a heart.
Romney’s second big problem is that pretty much everyone thinks of him as the poster boy for the one percent. He’s the guy who fired your sister — the cold, calculating numbers guy who clinically evaluates what is best for his bottom line and bloodlessly sends you off a pink slip. No empathy, no human concern. Romney is the fellow at Bain Capital that dismantled companies — and sent some into bankruptcy — all to make him and his deal-making buddies a pile of money.
He’s the guy who posed at the center of his Bain Capital crew with money coming out of their pockets, mouths, sleeves and ears.
You might think that Republican primary voters would think that those qualifications made Romney a capitalist hero. Trouble is, only a very limited number of Republican primary voters actually are the one percent that is the party’s financial base. Many Tea Party voters have some very unfortunate positions on all sorts of subjects — but the polling shows they care about their jobs, their Social Security, their Medicare. As much as they dislike “big government”, they don’t like Wall Street deal makers, either.
The Romney campaign narrative portrays him as problem-solving, effective businessman. Average voters would always prefer to have a president that effectively deals with their problems all right — but they don’t focus entirely on effectiveness. They want to know “effective for whom”?
The threshold question of politics is whether a candidate is “on my side.”
Voters would much rather vote for a candidate who they believe is on their side but ineffective, than one who is very effective advocating against their interests.
In 1988, Mike Dukakis premised his entire campaign on his managerial skill and technocratic effectiveness. After the Democratic Convention he led George H. W. Bush by 17%. Then the Bush campaign savaged Dukakis with a series of advertisements that effectively argued that Dukakis was “not on their side” — that he didn’t “share their values.” Dukakis stuck to his “effectiveness” argument, refusing to take on Bush’s values — the question of who is “on your side.” Ultimately, Bush beat Dukakis nationwide by 7.7% and four to one in the electoral vote.
Romney’s two fundamental problems are complicated by a third. Mitt has a hard time making an emotional connection with the voters. Ask Al Gore if this could be a political problem. And for Romney, the emotional connection issue is even more critical than it was for Gore because those traits tend to amplify people’s views that he has no core values and is a poster boy for the uncaring one percent. Romney seems wooden, scripted — phony and aloof.
In last week’s rare one-on-one interview with Fox News, Romney was brittle. He seemed offended that the interviewer would actually press him on the flip-flops in his record. He appeared to have a sense of entitlement, of aloof superiority that chafes at being questioned.
Romney is a caricature of a guy who was raised in a wealthy, privileged button-down environment.
These are the reasons that, no matter what happens in the rest of the Republican field, Romney never gets beyond about 25% of the primary vote in a poll. And that’s why Newt Gingrich has supplanted Romney as the new “top banana” in the Republican road show.
Conservatives know Gingrich. He may have done some serious flip-flops of his own, but most Conservative voters start with the presumption that Gingrich has been fighting for one version or the other of right wing values his entire career — and they like that. They also like the idea that Gingrich has always been an unapologetic Conservative, come what may, whereas Romney is a political chameleon that changes his spots to please whatever electorate he plans to court. Gingrich may sometimes veer out of control, but he is authentic — and quite a contrast to Romney’s robot-like-scripted phoniness.
The 75% of Republican primary voters have been screen testing all of the remaining candidates for the role of “alternative to Romney” for months. Romney is hoping that they never find a clear, suitable alternative, and his quarter of the vote, coupled with his “inevitability” and the argument that he would have the best chance against Obama, will be enough to power him to the nomination.
But it increasingly looks like that strategy is in serious trouble.
Voters and political operatives have begun to realize that his lack of core values and position as “poster boy” for the one percent will not just hurt him in the primaries — they will be toxic in the General Election as well. In fact recent polls have begun to show that it is now Gingrich that Republican primary voters think will have the best chance against Obama.
And as for “inevitability”? In Iowa, Romney is now third in the latest polls behind Gingrich and Ron Paul. If Gingrich wins Iowa he will consolidate his position as the “anti-Romney,” do well in New Hampshire — rout Romney in South Carolina and likely win Florida. After that you have to bet the “Big-Mo” will be with Gingrich.
But who knows? The clowns in circuses surprise us all the time with pratfalls and other bizarre acts. Like any good circus, the battle for the Republican nomination may leave us in suspense for some time to come.

Carrie Budoff Brown’s Politico post “Obama and blue-collar voters: Take 2” corroborates one of Ed Kilgore’s points in his “A Vote is a Vote” post that no serious political campaign is going to “abandon” any major political demographic. Indeed, far from “abandoning” blue collar workers, the Obama team is redoubling their efforts to reach them. As Brown notes:

Obama isn’t going to win the blue-collar crowd — he lost them in Pennsylvania by a wider margin, 15 percentage points, than John Kerry did in 2004. He lost the same vote nationwide by 18 points against Republican John McCain.
But he can’t risk bleeding much more of their support, even as his coalition of minorities, young people, educated whites and single women grows in population while the Republican base of older, whiter, more rural voters declines, said Ruy Teixera, the co-author of a new report from the liberal Center for American Progress on the demographics of the 2012 electorate.
“He knows he’s not starting out on the right foot with these voters,” Teixera said in an interview. “He is well aware that, given the structure of the electorate in the state, he doesn’t want that 15-point deficit to yawn into a widening gap.”
That means Obama will need to spend more time in Pennsylvania than recent presidential voting patterns, registration numbers and demographics would suggest. Every Democratic nominee since Bill Clinton in 1992 has won the state. Democrats enjoy a more than 1 million voter-registration edge. And Democratic operatives here and in the Obama campaign argue that weaknesses in the Republican field and the president’s latest push on jobs better position him to woo working-class voters.

Of course the Republicans are doing all they can to amp up the meme that the Obama Administration is somehow “abandoning” the white blue collar workers vote. But the notion is absurd, given the size of this constituency, and that even the most discouraging polls show him getting an ample bite of it. Moreover, the Republicans have very little to offer the white working class and there are some indications that the economy is beginning to improve.
The Obama campaign may end up investing more of its resources in turning out other constituencies, if their best research indicates that’s a more cost-effective way to go. But they well know that ‘abandonment” of any large demographic group would be political suicide.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
To what extent is demography destiny in politics? That’s the question that Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin’s much-discussed analysis of the 2012 presidential race puts front and center.
Teixeira and Halpin posit that the balance of two forces, “the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate, and the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states,” will likely determine the outcome of Obama’s reelection. At that level of generality, it’s hard to disagree. But I would argue that while demography matters, it is not as significant as Teixeira and Halpin believe. Yes, it makes a difference that Obama’s winning 2008 coalition relied on growing segments of the electorate while the traditional, mostly white Republican base is fated to shrink, election after election. But other things matter at least as much–especially the impact of the past three years on the orientation and enthusiasm of the Obama coalition, for reasons not all of which are rooted in the economy. Put simply: If Obama’s margins shrink among young people, Hispanics, and other key parts of his base while disappointment depresses their turnout, the falloff in Obama’s support will swamp the modest post-2008 demographic shifts in his favor.
While Teixeira and Halpin don’t disagree with my thesis (it’s a matter of simple arithmetic, after all), they systematically underplay the evidence suggesting that it may well come to pass. To redress the imbalance, let’s look at the most recent Gallup numbers from the week of November 21 to 27. Obama’s overall approval rating stood at 43 percent, as it has for more than a month–a level inconsistent with a successful reelection campaign unless there’s a significant third party candidate on the right.
For present purposes, it’s the details below the top line that matter. Specifically:

• Support for Obama among young voters ages 18 to 29 has plunged to only 48 percent.
• His approval among Hispanics stands at only 51 percent.
• With the exception of voters with post-graduate degrees, Obama is under water with every educational cohort: 42 percent among those with a high school diploma or less, 41 percent among those with some college, and 41 percent for voters with BAs.
• While his approval among Democrats and liberals remains robust (79 and 71 percent, respectively), he stands at only 39 percent among Independents and 51 percent among moderates–about 10 points below what Democrats need from these two categories to win national popular vote majorities.
• While the gulf between married voters and unmarried ones persists, Obama’s approval among unmarried voters stands at only 51 percent.

Compare these numbers with the shares of the vote Obama received from these groups in November 2008:

It’s clear that Obama’s margins are down–way down–not just among swing voters, but in the core of his coalition as well. Compounding the problem, the base’s enthusiasm and intensity have declined as well. As Gerald Seib has noted, while Democrats won the intensity race hands-down in 2008, the reverse is the case today. In the most recent NBC/WSJ poll, 56 percent of Republicans said that they were more enthusiastic than usual, versus only 43 percent of Democrats, and 59 percent of conservatives profess to be more enthusiastic than usual, versus only 38 percent of liberals. Over the past year, every survey has found these same disparities.
The bottom line is that unless things turn around considerably in the next eleven months, key parts of Obama’s winning 2008 coalition are poised to deliver both lower margins and smaller shares of the electorate than they did in 2008. (In general elections, actual votes closely mirror pre-election approval ratings.) If the election were held tomorrow against the most credible Republican challenger, the president would probably lose.
Demography shapes political orientations, of course. But so do events. And this is especially true for voters who don’t enter the political arena with well-established views and habits. While there’s good reason to believe that today’s young adults will remain more comfortable with diversity–of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation–than are their parents and grandparents, there’s no guarantee that this will translate into a liberal or pro-government orientation across the board. A thought-experiment: Suppose a Republican were to win the presidency in 2012, implemented a broadly conservative economic agenda, and that after four years the job market for young adults had improved substantially. Is it plausible that this scenario would have no impact on their long-term political orientation?
Similarly, while Obama received fully two-thirds of the votes from the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. population, the impact of his failure to enact–or even to push hard for–immigration reform is likely to be substantial. To be sure, few Republicans even espouse such an agenda. Still, it would not be unfair for Latinos to conclude that as things stand, neither party gives them much ground for hope.
Since the financial collapse began four years ago, events at home and abroad have disrupted Americans’ settled expectations. It would be prudent to assume that this will have a measurable impact on their political orientation as well. While it’s harder to predict the overall direction of these attitudinal changes, they may well tug against the influence of demography and reconfigure the political playing field.
Demography isn’t destiny. But neither is anything else. Americans’ political outlook will be shaped by the choices their leaders make, and even more by the consequences of those choices.

The following article by democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
As the Senate considers an extension of the payroll tax holiday, the big question is: why in the world would Republicans in Congress consider raising middle class taxes by $1,000 to $1,500 per household in the midst of an economic downturn and an election year?
This is a particularly vexing question when you recall the ardor with which the GOP has campaigned against raising the taxes paid by millionaires and billionaires by even one dime.
At the beginning of the week it appeared that virtually every Republican in the Senate was prepared to vote no on a Democratic proposal to extend and broaden the current payroll tax holiday.
Now some are beginning to get cold feet. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has now reportedly “opened the door” to considering the possibility of a payroll tax cut extension.
But the real question is why Republicans would contemplate voting against extension of the payroll tax holiday in the first place?
Voting no would be like leaping off a political cliff — taking an iconic vote that would no doubt become emblematic of the fact that they are willing to sacrifice the interests of the 99% to protect the fortunes of the wealthiest people in America. John Paulsen — the Wall Street hedge fund manager who made $5 billion last year (that’s $2,400,000 per hour!) — might consider this a courageous stand. But the everyday worker — who will take 48 years to make as much as Paulsen makes in one hour — might not be so charitable.
Perhaps, you might say, it’s because Republicans are taking a strong principled stand against raising the deficit. But that would not be the case, since the Democratic proposal is entirely paid for by a small increase in the taxes of millionaires.
What on earth could drive Senate Republicans to consider taking such a stupid vote? Four possibilities jump to mind.
1). Possible Reason Number 1: They claim the extension of the payroll tax holiday will undermine Social Security and Medicare.
Republican Senator Jon Kyl made this argument on the weekend talk shows. We can dismiss this talk as a complete smoke screen.
First, Senator Kyl and the Republicans have never given a rat’s rear about Social Security and Medicare in the first place.
Second, the payroll tax holiday that was passed last year does not remove one dime from the Social Security or Medicare trust funds. In fact, the lost payroll tax is replaced dollar for dollar from the Federal general revenue fund.
The payroll tax holiday itself is simply a means of putting money directly into the pockets of working people that is then replaced with money from the much more progressive overall Federal tax structure.
2). Possible Reason Number 2: Some Republicans really don’t believe that taking $1,500 out of the paychecks of everyday consumers will hurt the economy.
There are apparently some Republican lawmakers who have drunk the “Keynesian Economics Doesn’t Work” Kool-Aide. They actually believe that the only way to stimulate economic growth is to shovel more and more income into the hands of the top 1% — the “job creators” — and watch that money “trickle down” on the rest of us.
The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence that “trickle down” economics works — or ever worked.
We had an actual experiment with “trickle down” economics during the Bush Administration. The Republicans cut tax rates for the wealthy. The rich got a lot richer, and the median income of everyday families actually dropped. In fact it was the first decade in modern history that the economy did not create one net private sector job.
But — the Republicans say — two and a half years ago Congress passed a huge stimulus bill, and we still don’t have enough jobs.
Of course, they forget to mention that at the time, the economy was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs because the financial system had collapsed as a result of the very same policies they are now advocating once again. And there is the inconvenient fact that since the stimulus worked its way through the economy, we have had 20 straight months of private sector job growth — whereas during the last twelve months of the Bush Administration we lost massive numbers of private sector jobs.
Of course a good deal of that private sector growth has been offset by the Republican refusal to continue the stimulus bill’s aid to state and local governments. That resulted in layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers — and other public service workers who they must presume do not hold “real jobs.”
The problem with the stimulus bill was not that it didn’t work. The problem was that it wasn’t big enough. Republicans remind you of a guy who uses a hose to put out half of a house fire, turns off the water and then contends that water doesn’t put out fires because the entire fire hasn’t been extinguished. The obvious answer is to get more water. Not only do the Republicans want to stop pouring on the water of stimulus — they want to pour on the gasoline of austerity — just the opposite of what is needed to put out the bad economic flames.
When an economy is in recession the problem — by definition — is too little demand to absorb the goods and services that the economy can produce. The way to solve the problem is to generate more demand to jump-start the economy. This is not just a matter of opinion — it’s a matter of mathematics.
Republicans who run around claiming that economic stimulus — money in consumer pockets — isn’t what’s needed to stimulate economic growth are like people in the middle ages who refused to believe that the earth circles the sun. If the evidence doesn’t support their ideological frame, they throw out the evidence — not the ideological frame. They ignore the facts. It makes no more sense for them to vilify “Keynesians” than it did for an earlier generation to vilify “Copernicans.”
There is complete economic consensus that eliminating the payroll tax holiday today will be a disaster for the economy. In fact, economists like Mark Zandi — who advised John McCain’s campaign — argue that if the payroll tax holiday is not extended, it will shave 1.7% off the gross domestic product and throw the economy into a double dip recession.
3). Possible Reason Number 3: The Republicans oppose extending the payroll tax holiday, because President Obama is for it.
That’s certainly their knee-jerk response. They believe that anything that makes Obama look effective hurts Republican chances in 2012.
But they have some big problems here. First, many Republicans supported a payroll tax holiday in the past — and many voted for the original holiday last year. If they form a solid wall of opposition, they will look like hypocrites who changed their position simply to hurt their political opponents.
And, second, the entire issue puts them in political box canyon — with no escape. If they oppose extension they look like they are obstructing something that is good for the economy — and very palpable to everyday voters. If they support an extension, they give the President a victory.
4). Possible Reason Number 4: Republicans actually understand that ending the payroll tax holiday will hurt the economy — and that’s exactly what they want to do.
There are clearly some Republicans in Congress who actually believe that ending the payroll tax holiday won’t hurt the economy. But there are a lot of Republicans who know exactly what will happen and would be perfectly happy to hurt the economy.
In fact, the Republican leadership has laid a bet that if the economy continues to stagnate they are that much more likely to defeat Democrats next fall. They know that no President in a hundred years has been re-elected when the economy was not materially improving. And they are certainly right that a major issue in next year’s election will be who is responsible for the lousy economy.
Their problem is that by supporting an increase in the payroll tax that takes $1,500 out of the pockets of every middle class family, they create an iconic example of why the real problem is the “do-nothing Republican Congress.”
Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that Congress is completely controlled by Republicans. And even though the Senate leadership is Democratic, the Republican willingness to stop action using the filibuster means that they are, in fact, entirely responsible for preventing action to create jobs.
That’s good news for Democrats, since in some polls only 9% of Americans have a positive view of Congress and overwhelming numbers believe the country is on the wrong track.
That means that Democrats in Congress can run as outsiders who want to break the log jam in Congress and take action on jobs — take action to defend the middle class. It means that the President can lay the blame for the lousy economy directly at the doorstep of the Republican Party – and its nominee.
The battle over the extension of the payroll tax holiday plays right into that narrative. It is a huge problem for the Republicans in Congress. Bad enough that the “do-nothing Republican Congress” is doing everything it can to oppose President Obama’s agenda to create jobs. Taking $1,500 out of the pockets of everyday Americans gets downright personal.
That’s why, when the chips are down, the odds are good that the Republican leadership will fold its hand and support extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Give thanks for the “We Are Wisconsin” protest movement for starting a political earthquake that woke America up to the Republican campaign to crush the labor movement. Same goes for “We Are Ohio,” for their inspiring victory in smashing SB5.
Do read Dana Milbank’s WaPo column on wingnut Sen. Jon Kyl, poster-boy for GOP obstructionism, and thank God he’s retiring.
Also at the Post, Fareed Zakaria’s column “Be thankful — sensible solutions do exist for U.S. problems” cites “a groundswell for deeper political reform” as cause for optimism about America’s future.
A little gratitude is in order for the San Antonio federal court, which proposed a new redistricting map in which three additional Texas state legislative districts would have people of color as majorities. If the ruling holds up in a Supreme Court review, Dems will have an edge in winning back control of the state legislature.
Give thanks, Dems, for still-growing polarization and disunity within the GOP. As Hunter puts it at Daily Kos, “A secret Republican group bent on defeating a Republican because that Republican isn’t seen as ideologically insane enough to truly represent their crazy-ass party?…The ideological hoops you have to jump through these days in order to be considered a true conservative have become too numerous to count…Now you’re not a “true” conservative unless you want to roll back eighty years of government, replace the Constitution with the Ten Commandments and fire illegal immigrants out of a cannon into an electrified alligator-filled lake of molten sulfur.”
Be thankful, very thankful, for YouTube, the peoples’ video forum, which empowers everyone to make political ads like this one, or this one.
Progressive Dems can give thanks for Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, for keeping the populist torch blue-hot, as Scott Thill explains in his Alternet post, “10 Great Things To Be Thankful For in 2011.”
Give it up also for Occupy Wall St., for putting economic inequality on the front burner, with a special nod to the brave younguns of UC-Davis for showing America what courageous, disciplined nonviolence looks like.
And please don’t forget to express a little appreciation for MSNBC for providing significant week-night air-time for strong progressive voices like Maddow, Schultz, O’Donnell, Sharpton and Matthews, something I didn’t expect to see in my lifetime on any major network.

In his post at The Atlantic, “A Blueprint for Winning the White House in 2012,” Ronald Browstein discusses the Teixeira/Halpin study we cited in Tomasky’s analysis. Brownstein flags the study as “a comprehensive demographic and geographic roadmap to the 2012 presidential campaign that political junkies of all ideological stripes will want to keep close at hand.” Here’s some of Brownstein’s take:

In their new paper, The Path to 270, the two correctly lay out, I believe, the critical dynamics that will likely tip the balance in both the Electoral College and popular vote next year….Some Democrats fear (and Republicans hope) that even if more minorities and college-plus whites turn out to vote in 2012, they won’t increase as a share of the overall electorate because so many older and blue-collar whites will turn out to vote against Obama in 2012, just as they did in 2010. That will be a critical variable.
…Obama could more easily survive reduced margins among his most favorable groups if those same groups cast a larger proportion of all the votes….Assuming the minority vote unfolds as they project, Teixeira and Halpin calculate that Obama could still win a popular vote majority if he maintains his 47 percent share among college educated whites, even if non-college whites stampede toward the GOP as overwhelmingly as they did in 2010 (when Republicans captured 63 percent of them, up from 58 percent in 2008). Alternately, they argue, Obama could still maintain a narrow popular vote majority if he attracts three-fourths of minorities and loses college whites and non-college whites by the same margins John Kerry did against George W. Bush in 2004. (Kerry’s deficit with each group was about five percentage points larger than Obama’s against John McCain in 2008.)
“In summary,” they write, “given solid, but not exceptional, performance among minority voters, Obama’s re-election depends on either holding his 2008 white college-graduate support, in which case he can survive a landslide defeat of 2010 proportions among white working-class voters, or holding his slippage among both groups to around 2004 levels, in which case he can still squeak out a victory.”

Brownstein cautions that “recent polls suggest that at least on first impression, Mitt Romney has a much stronger chance than his GOP rivals of peeling off significant numbers of those upscale whites, who probably represent Obama’s last line of defense in 2012.” He quotes Teixeira and Halpin’s conclusion that the election is likely to be about demographics vs. economics.
Demographics may indeed be destiny in 2012, and if Obama gets a bit of a break on the economy, it could be very good news for Democrats.

Writing in the Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky has a post up which deserves attention from the Obama campaign. His first sentence alone stands as a ringing reality-check:

Well, now that it’s official that bipartisan compromise has no future in Washington, it’s time for President Obama to put aside once and for all the idea of playing patty-cake with these people and instead focus ruthlessly on getting to 270 electoral votes…

From there, Tomasky dismisses the either/or argument for NC+VA+CO vs. rust belt electoral vote strategies as “silly,” and urges Obama to go for both. He then plugs an important new strategy paper by TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, “The Path to 270: Demographics Versus Economics in the 2012 Election,” summarizing the gist of the paper: “Obama isn’t going to get his 2008 levels of the white vote. But he can’t quite absorb white-vote totals that look like 2010. And he is going to have to fight hard, and smart, to keep them closer to the former than the latter.” Tomasky continues,

Demographically, everything is moving Obama’s way. The study largely splits the electorate into three groups: minorities; white college-educated voters (WCEs); and the white-working class (WWC), which is defined here and usually as whites without a college degree, which for a range of reasons is the best way to identify that group for voting purposes…
The minority share of the electorate was 26 percent in 2008. It’s likely to be 28 percent in 2012. The white working class will continue to shrink. It will make up 3 percent less of the electorate than it did in 2008, dropping from 39 percent to 36 percent. White college graduates will gain 1 percent, from 35 to 36.
…Obama took 80 percent of the minority population (26 percent of the country) in 2008. Teixeira and Halpin “conservatively” estimate that his share of the minority vote will go down to 75–basically from less enthusiasm, especially from nonblack minority-group voters. But that decline still translates into an ever-so-slightly-higher percentage of the overall vote (21 percent to 20.8 percent), because the voting pool has expanded. So Obama can suffer some decline in margins among minority groups without it being remotely fatal.
More strikingly, he can absorb significant WWC losses and still win the popular vote. …The authors write that he could replicate John Kerry’s 2004 numbers–losing WCEs by 11 points and the WWC by 23, both more or less smack-dab between the 2008 and 2010 results–and still win the popular vote by 50 to 48.

Turning to the electoral college, Tomasky notes that “The authors say that Obama’s core states add up to 186 EVs, and the GOP’s, 191. They identify 12 states that are going to decide the winner…” Tomasky adds,

…He did better among white working-class voters than among white college-educated voters–that’s right, better!–in Michigan and Iowa. And he won them in Wisconsin. Yet he lost WWCs horribly in Pennsylvania (but in 2012, WWCs will make up 5 percent less of the electorate). In the new South states, meanwhile, he did nearly as badly among WCEs as among WWCs–for example, in North Carolina he got 33 percent of the WWCs and 38 percent of the WCEs. Only a huge minority vote won him those states.
…He is going to have to assemble different coalitions from battleground state to battleground state around a message that can rally segments of all three groups. For all their differences, there is one thing almost all members of those three groups have in common. They’re part of the 99 percent. The authors want to see “a sustained posture of defending the middle class, supporting popular government programs, and calling for a more equitable tax distribution.” Sounds good to me.

And with the Republican presidential candidates doubling down on their image as rigid enemies of all three of those priorities, the President’s strategy for re-election now clear.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Inside-the-beltway pundits have already begun to decry the so-called “failure” of the super committee to hammer out an agreement that would have almost certainly resulted in huge cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits for ordinary Americans.
Those ordinary Americans should applaud the Democrats’ refusal to buckle to Republican demands for Draconian cuts in these critical middle class programs.
In addition, Democrats insisted that Congress’ top priority at this moment should be creating jobs, and that the only fair way to bring down future deficits is to end tax breaks for the wealthy and, once again, require that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.
Of course it should come as no surprise that Republican negotiators were completely unwilling to allow meaningful increases in the share of taxes paid by millionaires and billionaires — whose slice of the overall economic pie has exploded over the last three decades. They were unwilling to increase top tax rates to the Clinton-era levels of 39.6% — much less the 50% marginal tax rate millionaires paid during first administration of that well-known “socialist” Ronald Regan.
After all, the Republicans have one central mission — to act as guard dogs for incomes of the one percent. Enhancing the wealth of the wealthiest Americans is in fact the core goal of current leadership of the Republican Party. They are willing to battle through hell and back to defend the riches of the Koch brothers of the world.
Never mind that two-thirds of Americans believe that taxing millionaires is the best way to reduce the federal deficit. Never mind that 70% say they oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare to cut the deficit.
In fact, most Americans are down right militant about not cutting Social Security, Medicare to reduce the deficit.
In a recent poll by the Republican polling firm, American Viewpoint, and the Democratic firm, Lake Research Partners, 49% — including 42% of Republicans — said they would be more likely to vote Members of Congress who voted against cutting Social Security and Medicare as part of a Super Committee proposal (18% were less likely).
And 54% said they would be less likely to vote for a Member of Congress who supported cutting Social Security and Medicare as part of a budget deal (14% more likely) — including 65% of independents and 42% of Republicans.
According to a recent memo by Anzalone Research, a poll by Pulse Opinion Research, on behalf of The Hill newspaper, finds:

… a greater than 4:1 margin who believes the middle class is shrinking (67%) as opposed to growing (14%). They also find a majority of Americans (55%) identify “income inequality in the U.S.” as a “major problem”, with another 19% declaring it “somewhat of a problem.” … an ABC/Washington Post Poll shows 60% of Americans want the “federal government to pursue policies to reduce the gap between the wealthy and less well-off Americans”, compared to 35% who believe the government should not pursue such policies.

And it’s no wonder.
Four hundred families control as much wealth today as 150 million of their fellow Americans — roughly half of the population.
In fact, the top one percent, control as much wealth as the bottom 90%. That’s not democracy.
And when it comes to income, Anzalone’s memo notes that:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans reached a record high last year. The Gini measure is a statistical measure of income inequality and the Census Bureau also finds it reaching record levels…

By rejecting the Republican proposals in the Super Committee, Democrats were simply expressing the views — and standing up for the interests — of the vast majority of Americans.
What’s more, they were standing up for the future of the American middle class.
Long-term, widely shared prosperity requires that the incomes of everyday people increase in proportion to their increasing productivity. If it doesn’t, they simply won’t have the money to buy the increased number of goods and services that they themselves have the ability to produce. That is the formula for economic stagnation and the end of the American dream.
The inability of the super committee to reach an agreement is not a reflection on the “intransigence” of both sides and “unwillingness” to compromise. The far right that now dominates the Republican Party insists on positions that fall far outside of mainstream views of everyday American voters. They want changes in the American social contract that will destroy the middle class.
They are intent on continuing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the top 1%. They demand the elimination of Medicare and want to substitute a publicly funded private insurance program in its place that will raise average out of pocket costs for retirees by $6,000 a year. They want major cuts in Social Security benefits. They want to “reform” the tax code so it would permanently lock in the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and go even further to lower tax rates for the 1%.
These are not issues that should be subject to “compromise” — in a democracy they should be the subject of elections.
What’s next for the battle over the role of government?
The Republicans will no doubt rush to eliminate the provision of their own deal to raise the debt ceiling, that required the Defense Department to absorb 50% of the $1.2 trillion automatic “sequestration” of spending that begins in January 2013. That provision was supposed to force them to compromise on their inflexible opposition against more government revenue — but it didn’t work. Now they want to change the rules.
But that isn’t going to happen. The president has indicated, in no uncertain terms, that he will veto any attempt to eliminate the Defense Department from the sequestration trigger.
That doesn’t mean that sometime during the next 13 months there won’t be a deal that modifies the sequestration requirement. But to be viable any deal will have to be balanced, and pass through the regular order of the Congress — not on some Congressional “fast track” procedure that gives the upper hand to Republicans.
The right wing chose to use the debt ceiling as the leverage to force the round of deficit wars that will conclude when the mandate of the Super Committee expires. That battleground gave them a huge tactical advantage.
Progressives’ best hope for a long-term budget deal that reflects our values is to insist that the next battle take place as the Bush Tax Cuts are scheduled to expire in the lame duck session following the November elections. That will be the moment when we have the greatest leverage to drive the best bargain for ordinary Americans.
In addition, I believe that the outcome of the elections themselves will completely change the political dialogue in America. The relative importance of jobs programs, the importance of assuring that millionaires pay their fair share, and the importance of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — will all be litigated in the next election. Progressives have the high political ground on every one.
In the meantime, Congress must refocus its full attention on the real crisis facing our country — the need to create jobs, put Americans back to work and defend the middle class.

In his most recent ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira presents data indicating that conservatives have a lot to be worried about, regarding the political attitudes of the rising Millennial generation, “the most progressive generation in the electorate, and its political influence rises every year as more of that generation becomes eligible to vote.” As Teixeira explains:

Conservatives hoped that the severe economic problems of the last few years would solve their generational problem. These problems, they thought, would lead Millennials to blame President Barack Obama and progressives for our current difficulties and desert the progressive camp.
Well, think again. A massive new Pew study on “The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election” indicates that the Millennial generation adults (defined by Pew as those adults born 1981 or after) remain resolutely progressive.

Teixeira offers a few examples:

On current economic policy, 55 percent of Millennials think the higher priority for the federal government should be spending to help the economy recover rather than reducing the budget deficit (41 percent).
On health care, 67 percent of Millennials either want to expand the 2010 health care legislation (44 percent) or leave it as it is (23 percent). Just 27 percent want to repeal it.
On social issues, 59 percent of Millennials support allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, compared to only 35 percent who oppose this.
On foreign policy, 66 percent of Millennials believe the best way to achieve peace is through good diplomacy, compared to 27 percent who believe the best way to peace is through military strength.

On the major issues of the day, the latest opinion data indicate that a healthy majority of Millennial Generation embraces progressive values — and it’s increasingly clear which party is in the best position to benefit from their preferences.